BiblioVault - Books by Richardson, John

Alexander Robey Shepherd

The Man Who Built the Nation’s Capital

John P. Richardson

Ohio University Press, 2016

With Alexander Robey Shepherd, John P. Richardson gives us the first full-length biography of his subject, who as Washington, D.C.’s, public works czar (1871–74) built the infrastructure of the nation’s capital in a few frenetic years after the Civil War. The story of Shepherd is also the story of his hometown after that cataclysm, which left the city with churned-up streets, stripped of its trees, and exhausted.

An intrepid businessman, Shepherd became president of Washington’s lower house of delegates at twenty-seven. Garrulous and politically astute, he used every lever to persuade Congress to realize Peter L’Enfant’s vision for the capital. His tenure produced paved and graded streets, sewer systems, trees, and gaslights, and transformed the fetid Washington Canal into one of the city’s most stately avenues. After bankrupting the city, a chastened Shepherd left in 1880 to develop silver mines in western Mexico, where he lived out his remaining twenty-two years.

In Washington, Shepherd worked at the confluence of race, party, region, and urban development, in a microcosm of the United States. Determined to succeed at all costs, he helped force Congress to accept its responsibility for maintenance of its stepchild, the nation’s capital city.

[more]

Health, Disease, and Illness

Concepts in Medicine

Arthur L. Caplan, James J. McCartney, and Dominic A. Sisti, Editors

Georgetown University Press, 2004

In the 1850s, "Drapetomania" was the medical term for a disease found among black slaves in the United States. The main symptom was a strange desire to run away from their masters. In earlier centuries gout was understood as a metabolic disease of the affluent, so much so that it became a badge of uppercrust honor—and a medical excuse to avoid hard work. Today, is there such a thing as mental illness, or is mental illness just a myth? Is Alzheimer's really a disease? What is menopause—a biological or a social construction?

Historically one can see that health, disease, and illness are concepts that have been ever fluid. Modern science, sociology, philosophy, even society—among other factors—constantly have these issues under microscopes, learning more, defining and redefining ever more exactly. Yet often that scrutiny, instead of leading toward hard answers, only leads to more questions. Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine.

Divided into four parts—Historical Discussions; Characterizing Health, Disease, and Illness; Clinical Applications of Health and Disease; and Normalcy, Genetic Disease, and Enhancement: The Future of the Concepts of Health and Disease—the reader can see the evolutionary arc of medical concepts from the Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (ca. 150 ce) who proposed that "the best doctor is also a philosopher," to contemporary discussions of the genome and morality. The editors have recognized a crucial need for a deeper integration of medicine and philosophy with each other, particularly in an age of dynamically changing medical science—and what it means, medically, philosophically, to be human.

[more]

Memory, Space and Sound

Edited by Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson, and John Richardson

Intellect Books, 2016

Memory, Space and Sound presents a collection of essays from scholars in a range of disciplines that together explore the social, spatial, and temporal contexts that shape different forms of music and sonic practice. The contributors deploy different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches from musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural history, media studies, and cultural studies as they analyze an array of examples, including live performances, music festivals, audiovisual material, and much more.

[more]

Negotiation Analysis

The Science and Art of Collaborative Decision Making

By Howard Raiffa with John Richardson and David Metcalfe

Harvard University Press, 2002

This masterly book substantially extends Howard Raiffa's earlier classic, The Art and Science of Negotiation. It does so by incorporating three additional supporting strands of inquiry: individual decision analysis, judgmental decision making, and game theory. Each strand is introduced and used in analyzing negotiations.

The book starts by considering how analytically minded parties can generate joint gains and distribute them equitably by negotiating with full, open, truthful exchanges. The book then examines models that disengage step by step from that ideal. It also shows how a neutral outsider (intervenor) can help all negotiators by providing joint, neutral analysis of their problem.

Although analytical in its approach--building from simple hypothetical examples--the book can be understood by those with only a high school background in mathematics. It therefore will have a broad relevance for both the theory and practice of negotiation analysis as it is applied to disputes that range from those between family members, business partners, and business competitors to those involving labor and management, environmentalists and developers, and nations.

[more]

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Picasso, Provence, and Douglas Cooper

John Richardson

University of Chicago Press, 2001

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is John Richardson's vivid memoir of the time he spent living with and learning from the deeply knowledgeable and temperamental art collector, Douglas Cooper. For ten years the two entertained a circle of friends that included Jean Cocteau, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and, most intriguingly, Pablo Picasso. Compulsively readable and beautifully illustrated, this book is both a triple portrait of the author, Cooper, and Picasso, and a revealing look at a crucial artistic period.

[more]